Chris Meistre

Now Cache was really really a non planned baby

We were busy driving in the bush close to a river when we spotted this little puppy walking in the middle of no where.  It was so out of place that for an instance I didn’t recognize it as a doggie, but rather as another animal.  As we got closer and I stopped next to it, she just went to lay down from exhaustion.

She was wrapped up in one of our jerseys and Bernadette put her on her lap.  The only thing we had with us to drink was Energade, so we gave her a bit of it.  We spent the next hour driving around the bush looking to see if there wasn’t perhaps a mother doggie laying somewhere with more puppies.  She didn’t look underfed, so we guessed she must’ve come from the nearby suburb.  But she would’ve had to walk really far to get there.

We drove to the suburb and started asking around if anyone knew the puppy.  At the community centre we also left our details together with a description of the dog in case someone came to ask.  At this point, although neither of us said anything, we knew we would keep the puppy if no one claimed her.  Taking her to the animal welfare would just break our hearts.

At home we fed her a bit, and got her clean and took her to the Vet.  She had a lot of fleas on her.  We decided that we’ll name her Cache in the meanwhile.

By this time Tux has had to deal with so many newcomers to our household that he didn’t even worry anymore.  They got used to her very quickly.

Then she started walking into things.  When it became more often we realised that she was blind.  Shame, I felt so sorry for her.  But she has adapted very nicely and very quickly.  She is now our little princess and acts like one too!  Mommy’s girl.

Cache

Cache

Our second doggie that we got was an English Bull Terrier, and we named her Lexi.

Lexi's First Bath

I’ve always loved this breed of dogs, and grew up with them.  Most people are scared of them, but I think they’re the most lovable dogs that you can get.

The day we brought back Lexi to meet up with her new brother Tux, Tux was not a happy dog.  He someone probably knew he was going to have to only get half the attention he used to get.  They got on so well right from the beginning.

Tux wasn’t happy when Lexi started to outgrow him, I think he liked being a bit higher than someone else for a while.

Lexi and Tux

When Lexi was a bit older, she and Tux used to fight every now and then, but we got them over that quickly.  There were no casualties, just doggies trying to sort out who is the boss.  Tux likes laying close to her to get some warmth.

We’ve also never had a problem with Lexi being aggressive towards us or any people that visit us.  A few times though you can see she’s not happy when strange people walk past the house.

Unfortunately as she has gotten older, she’s developed a little heart problem.  It’s manageable now, but in the beginning we stressed out quite a bit.  It happened when we took them for a walk after not having gone for a few months.  The reason for stopping was because of all the attacks on people and animals by dogs that walk around in our neighborhood.  So the first time we took her again, she passed out after going a few metres out of the yard.  It was the most horrible feeling going over me when I saw that – her just passing out.

We knew that she was just very excited, so we wrote it off as a panic attack.  The next time it happened again we decided to take her to the Vet.  He checked her out, and couldn’t see anything wrong.  In the end we took her to a specialist who monitor her for a day.  It turns out the this specific breed has a problem with their hearts with some of the females.  There is an option to put her on heart pills now, but that will make it even weaker, so we decided to rather try and manage it by keeping her calm.

I want to go to School

Since then (about a year ago) there’s been about 3-4 incidents.  When we take her for a walk, we make sure she keeps as calm as we possible can keep her and it’s worked great.  It looks like the exercise is actually making it better, because I can rather further and further with them each time.

Lexi

Tux, our little dachshund, was our first little baby.  We got him when he was very young.  It was the first time his mother had a litter and she wasn’t handling it very well.  So we got him at about 4 weeks and had to ween him on a bottle.

It was like taking care of a little baby.  We had to get up a couple of times in the night to feed him.  As he was very small, we had him sleep on the bed with us.  During the nights we would wake up panicking thinking we had rolled onto him.  It was quite strange, and because we’ll probably never have children (by choice) I can only imagine this is how it must be to have kids.

I was Small

Sleeping with the Daddy

Tux got used to having his blankie with him at all times.  To this day, more than 5 years later, he is still our little baby.  He falls asleep at night sucking on his blankie.  Some nights we still let them sleep with us, but mostly each one has his own little pillow around on bed on which they sleep.  Tux has a way of getting himself nice and snuggled underneath any blanket, no matter how big or small.  Even being the smallest, he is the one with the biggest mouth and he doesn’t stand down, not even for our bull terrier.

The Tux

The Tux

On 1 July 2009 I saw that we had another Love Bird egg in the nest.  2 days later there were a total of 5 eggs in there.  So hopefully around the 29th we should have some little babies!

Love Bird Eggs

At the same time I saw the little Diamond Doves had laid eggs as well.  So this whole week I’ve been checking the nest morning and night to see when it will hatch.  For the last 2 days there’s been little cracks on the eggs.  I checked this morning, nothing.  When we checked tonight, one baby had hatched.  I think this is the soonest we’ve seen them just after hatching.

I will wait a week or two for them to first start getting fed by the parents, and then I’d like to try and hand rear these Diamond Doves.  Don’t even know if it’s possible to tame them?

Little Baby Diamond Dove - Around 3 hours old

Sometimes I get sad when I have to think how we’ve got to make our homes more and more like prisons so that people cannot break into our property to steal our stuff or harm us.  We’ve had to, at great expense, put up electric fencing, higher walls, higher gates and alarm system ever since moving in.  There’s also the ongoing cost of having an armed response security company keeping watch for you via the alarm system.

I can gladly say (touch wood) that we have not had a problem at our home, and I’d like to keep it that way.  I always believe if you make your place a bit more difficult to break into than the person next door, they’ll rather target that person.  Sad that we’ve got to think like that, but that’s the way it is.

We make use of Seagate Security Services at our home, and I’m extremely impressed with their response.  A couple of times that our alarm has gone off, they always phone within seconds of it going off, and most of the time after the call has been completed and you look down the street you see the vehicle already on it’s way just in case there is a problem.  Awesome service I think.  It makes us feel a little bit more at ease knowing we have someone looking over us.

This morning we woke up with the alarm going off.  Now if you’ve ever woken up like that, you know it’s a horrible feeling.  It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to read on the panel to see which zone was activated.  I ran downstairs to check it out, and as I opened our bedroom door I already heard my cellphone ringing.  On the way to it I checked that everything was in order, and picked it up and it was a lady from Seagate asking if everything was fine.  I couldn’t believe it, it must’ve been about 3-5 seconds from the alarm being activated to the phone ringing.  Luckily everything was fine, and it seemed a moth or something caused the motion sensor to activate.

So if you’re in Port Elizabeth and need a company you can depend on in the time you’ll need them most I will definitely recommend Seagate. Their number is 041 487 3425.